Courage to dissent

Has the Pakhtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) inspired the first civil rights movement of our era? This is a question that may not get a straight answer from the mainstream media. But the demands raised by PTM are a textbook case of equal rights. The rhetoric around the demands is gravitating. The slogans resonate with people, not just in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), but far and wide, and across ethnicities. Perhaps for the first time; the middle-class, educated and urbanised Pakhtun youth has occupied streets and claimed public squares in large numbers through rallies, public assemblies and corner meetings; all this is unprecedented!

The Pakhtun youth have experienced a horrible war that doesn’t have a clear objective, and have received little empathy from the rest of the country. Finally, it has propelled itself to a people’s cause that has stirred up all hell. It has also opened up cracks in the narrative carefully manufactured after the Army Public School (APS) massacre in Peshawar. What does it matter if the war was not fought against Pakhtuns, but was meant to ‘clear out’ Pakhtun areas? It is all semantics at this stage. Such subtleties don’t change the experiences of people who lived through agony for the better part of the last twenty years. Wars they said, were too serious a business to be left to the generals alone, fifteen years on, with no end in sight, there is a section of Pakistan’s population, that has dared to question the state’s narrative and policies.

Efforts made to drown out the PTM’s civil rights demands continue to provoke greater interest in the movement itself. For a significant period, there was a forced media blackout about the movement, with exception of some English dailies. Why is there such paranoia? Now with international media outlets describing Mazari Caps as symbols of dissent in modern day Pakistan in their stories — simply looking the other way will not cut it. Those in the corridors of power must meaningfully engage with the PTM, and this can only happen if PTM’s demands are met without exceptions, exclusions, qualifications contingencies or labels from the moral brigade. We can’t continue to confuse dissent with disloyalty.

More than anything, PTM is about asserting identity; burying the warrior image, challenging societal dogmas, questioning regressive traditions and carving out a fresh space for modern times

More than anyone else — it is the Pakhtun youth that has struggled for identity in the post-9/11 Pakistan. Pakhtuns in universities in Punjab and Sindh have always experienced societal biases — in the form of crass humour, aping of accents and insults to intelligence — but they always dealt with hit and moved on to contribute to the national fabric.

However, things got worse after the War on Terror. Now Pakhtuns were considered radicals at home and suspects elsewhere. They were all profiled and put on the spot to explain the heinous actions of a few terrorists.

More than anything, PTM is about asserting identity; burying the warrior image, challenging societal dogmas, questioning regressive traditions and carving out a fresh space in modern times. By doing so, PTM simply seeks equal treatment, both in formal structurers and in informal paraphernalia of the state, with other ethnic denominations. Is that too much to ask?

Many find it hard to rationalise how the murder of one Naqeebullah Mehsud (another statistic right?), could galvanise a national movement like this. We need to acknowledge that underlying currents of denial and fractured pride were always there. Pashteen and his peers had already made plans before the incident to march towards the capital against missing persons and landmines. The cold-blooded murder of Naqeeb simply provided an opportunity to appeal to the national conscience. Saving one more life was worth all the risks associated with the cause. Perhaps no one who is associated with the cause today had any epiphany, singular revelation or a moment of truth. Perhaps the images that we see today are only an outcome of a steady accumulation of a thousand slights, a thousand indignities and a thousand unremembered moments that have produced rebelliousness and anger in Pakhtuns over decades.

As for the rest of country — it needs to acknowledge that what happened in FATA over the past 17 years and its adjoining areas is not normal. If there are people who want to reach out and share their stories, they must be respected. Sadly, the tendency to disregard Pakhtuns as an ‘other’ is so pervasive in our society that we don’t even realise it exists. The idea that FATA should be integrated into the mainland Pakistan, either as part of KP or as independent province; that fundamental rights be extended to the people of FATA with access to superior courts in the constitutional jurisdiction, abolition of FCR, removal of landmines from the open fields, removal of check posts where residents and their families are blatantly harassed, truth and reconciliation commission or formation of war tribunals for righting the history; all these demands are not only related to Pakhtuns. These are our demands and Pakistan’s problem.

Will PTM pivot and transform into a political party? There is certainly a temptation. With the Awami National Party’s (ANP) stocks dwindling, there is space for a genuine middle class political force representing Pakhtuns. But electoral politics also means compromises. Its corruptible. In their raw exuberance, at this point in time, the PTM is in no mood to blink. For how long, only time will tell. As of today, few thought this movement could capture the imagination of masses and fewer still can predict its future!